The Defense of Marriage Act passed into law in 1996. Walz is the latest lawmaker to sponsor the repeal effort in the House, bringing the number up to 122 representatives. U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York said the bill has been offered every year, but that this year it has gathered the greatest number of sponsors in its history.

Reps. Keith Ellison and Betty McCollum are original sponsors of the Respect for Marriage Act which was introduced in March. Sen. Al Franken is an original sponsor in the Senate, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar joined him this summer. Rep. Collin Peterson is the only DFLer in Minnesota’s delegation that hasn’t signed the repeal.

“Getting married to my wife Gwen and building our life together was the best thing that ever happened to me,” Walz said in a statement. “I simply cannot imagine why we would want to ban our fellow Americans from that commitment. Martin Luther King Jr. once said ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.’ I believe that arc is getting shorter and I look forward to a day in my lifetime when Americans are not discriminated on based on who they love.”

The repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act would ensure that same-sex couples who have been legally married in the United States would have access to federal benefits such as social security, file jointly on tax forms and enjoy less onerous immigration requirements for binational couples.

Same-sex couples can legally mary in Iowa, New York, Massachusetts, District of Columbia, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Connecticut, and the sovereign nations of the Coquille and Suquamish. In addition, couples married in California prior to the passing of Proposition 8 in 2008 hold valid marriage licenses in that state.

“As the march toward full equality for LGBT Americans is seeing some real, concrete progress, the movement to repeal DOMA is steadily growing stronger and more robust,” Nadler said of the 122 sponsors. “The coalition working for LGBT rights in the Congress and the nation as a whole is larger than ever before, and we gain new allies every day. And, just this year, New York State enacted marriage equality, hammering one more nail into the coffin of bigotry and discrimination against gays and lesbians. Dumping DOMA is simply not a question of if, but when.”

Gutierrez and Honda were already co-sponsors of the bill — they signed on in February 2009 — but it never made it to the House floor. Politico reports that the congressmen are trying to push for the bill again, this time as part of comprehensive immigration reform. The idea is to tie gay and lesbian rights to immigration to increase support for both. Republicans have their doubts about this strategy:

More than 100 House Democrats, including many Hispanics, have signed on to the comprehensive immigration bill Gutierrez introduced last December. But Joanna Burgos, a National Republican Campaign Committee spokeswoman, said the gay-rights provision—opposed by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and National Association of Evangelicals—could scare away some of those supporters.

“If they’re trying to appeal to the Hispanic vote, gay marriage is not the right issue for their socially conservative values,” Burgos said. “I think it puts Democrats in Hispanic districts in an awkward position because they are very socially conservative.” …

Republican leaders, who are pressing the federal government to secure the border before fixing its broken immigration system, said they won’t support the immigration reform so long as it includes a path to citizenship for the 11 million illegal immigrants already in the country.

“They’re trying to sweeten the package, but the fact is it’s got a poison pill inside it. They’re asking us to swallow amnesty,” said Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-Calif.), chairman of the bipartisan Immigration Reform Caucus. “This is a special package that rewards illegal behavior instead of enforcing the law.”

President Obama, addressing military families on Sunday at an Independence Day celebration, faces growing opposition to the Afghan war from within his own party. (epa/ZUMApress.com)

The war in Afghanistan has produced divisions among Democrats in Congress from the start, but a series of votes on Thursday night revealed a rising tide of Democratic discontentment that could alter the trajectory of the Obama administration’s approach to the conflict.

[Security1] A measure to fund the administration’s 30,000-troop surge with $33 billion narrowly passed late Thursday, by a 215-210 margin. But the inclusion of domestic spending projects in the overall package appeared to boost its support among some Democrats, while a number of votes on amendments signaled a growing desire for an exit strategy.

“The close vote shows the rising disagreements over war policy,” said Darrell M. West, director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution. “The war has never been popular among Democratic activists and now lawmakers are starting to express their own doubts.”

An amendment calling for a flexible withdrawal timetable — sponsored by Reps. David Obey (D-Wis.), Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) and Walter Jones (R-N.C.) — failed to pass the House, but it won 162 votes, including those of 153 Democrats, three-fifths of the Democratic caucus.

McGovern hailed it as an “important milestone” in a statement released Friday. “This vote should send a signal to the Administration that Congress is increasingly troubled by risking the lives of our troops and borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars for ‘nation-building’ in Afghanistan while we are facing a dire economic situation here at home,” he said. “I will continue to work to build bi-partisan support for a meaningful exit strategy from this war.”

An amendment introduced Thursday by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) proposed to restrict future war funding to troop redeployment and protecting soldiers presently in combat. It received 100 votes, including those of 93 Democrats. A third amendment to slash war funding entirely from the bill won the votes of 25 congressmen, including 22 Democrats, while an additional 22 Democrats chose not to oppose it and voted “present.”

“Obviously, a lot of people are understandably anxious. The sustainability of this war is in some doubt,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a foreign policy expert at Brookings.

Antiwar sympathies seemed notably stronger than during a previous effort in the House to implement a withdrawal timetable, a motion in March by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) that failed 365-65. Prior attempts have likewise been overwhelmingly defeated.

Speaking out most forcefully for limits to the war were the 23 members of the “Out of Afghanistan Caucus,” established by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) on May 18.

“It’s a fool’s errand,” said Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), one of the members, during a press conference Thursday. “Every dollar we spend in Afghanistan, every life we waste there, is a waste. … What makes us think, what arrogance gives us the right to assume that we can succeed where the Moguls, the British, the Soviets, failed?”

Also on Thursday, Reps. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), John Conyers (D-Mich.), Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and Mike Honda (D-Calif.) took aim at President Obama for depicting the measure as urgent.

“It is disingenuous to say this is an ‘emergency’ supplemental,” they said in a joint statement. “The only emergency,” they said, is that “we are putting America further into debt” by “funding the longest war in history.” They added: “Last year, President Obama pledged to stop these off-budget gimmicks to hide the cost of war.”

West of Brookings noted that it’s historically unusual for presidents to face challenges over war policy from within their own party.

“Generally, members of your own party support your foreign policy,” he said. “It’s typical that you have to worry more about the opposition party than your own, and the fact that Democrats are expressing reservations should send a warning sign to the Obama administration.”

This deepening fissure could turn into a headache for the president and Democratic leaders.

“There’s been a schism in the Democratic Party over all wars since Vietnam. What matters is the intensity of it,” said Eric Alterman, of the liberal Center for American Progress. “[The antiwar coalition is] going to make it more difficult for [Obama] to continue the war, and they’re going to be a faction that has to be negotiated with.”

“But they’re not going to cut him off at the knees, they’re not to going to humiliate him, and they’re not going to destroy his presidency over it,” Alterman continued. “It’s not going to be the kind of thing that tears the party apart, as this issue has done in the past, because people have learned those lessons.”

O’Hanlon, a self-described Democrat and proponent of the Afghanistan occupation, cautioned that stripping funding now would cause Democrats to get “pilloried by Republicans” for “being weak on defense.” “It would be not only strategically unwise but politically suicidal,” he said.

And while skeptical Democrats could play an important role in determining the eventual outcome of the war, they may not wield much influence over the administration’s short-term strategy.

“This group has influence in the broader sense because obviously it has put a stake in the ground, and if things continue to go badly in Afghanistan, its influence will grow,” O’Hanlon said. “At some point it may be able to push the United States out of this conflict, but for now it’s not going to have any direct impact on strategy.”

Recent weeks and months have enhanced negative perceptions of the war, due to escalating violence, the ousting of Gen. Stanley McChrystal and charges of corruption by the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Polls suggest Americans are growing increasingly dissatisfied with the war.

The Obama administration hasn’t flinched in its commitment to the effort, and has even begun to back away from its promise to begin winding America’s involvement in the war next July. “That absolutely has not been decided,” said Defense Secretary Robert Gates on June 20 on Fox News, nothing that withdrawal will be “conditions-based.” Obama said on June 28 that there’s “a lot of obsession” about the withdrawal date, which irritated some Democrats who perceived it as a snub.

It’s unclear whether Democrats will accept the president’s decision to extend it beyond then, if he chooses to.

“I think a year from now all bets are off if we haven’t seen major progress,” O’Hanlon said. “It’s possible to imagine a revolt within the party in a year.”

Congress has held two hearings already on the cases of Ashcroft v. Iqbal and Bell Atlantic v. Twombly, which introduced a new “credibility” requirement in pleading standards that civil rights advocates and some Democratic lawmakers complain leaves the fate of discrimination victims to the prejudices of a particular judge assigned to the case. Now, instead of simply having to state clearly what the claims are, plaintiffs have to convince the judge that those claims are credible at the outset, before even having had an opportunity to collect evidence to support them.

While that pleases some conservatives who view most civil rights lawsuits with skepticism, civil rights experts say it rewards employers and others who discriminate but have learned to cover their tracks.

As the Times puts it today: “The practical impact in, say, an employment discrimination case is to disadvantage the wronged employee, who is unlikely to have access at the outset to the records needed to prove wrongful conduct.”

The Times cites John Payton, president of the NAACP legal defense fund, who recently testified that some of the landmark cases of the civil rights era might never have survived the Supreme Court’s new standard. In his written testimony submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this month, Payton cites specific examples of potentially meritorious cases that didn’t survive the new standard because the plaintiffs couldn’t convince a skeptical judge that employment, voting or housing discrimination is “credible.”

As Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), a former U.S. Attorney, put it at that Senate hearing, “In my experience, misconduct is inherently implausible” because we generally expect people to act decently, fairly and lawfully.

Nadler’s legislation acknowledges the fact that sometimes, they don’t live up to that standard.

That’s the question a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee examined Wednesday. Echoing a recent parallel hearing in the Senate, lawmakers and witnesses considered whether the Supreme Court’s recent rulings in two key cases undermined the ability of victims to have their day in court, or protected business and government from costly and intrusive lawsuits.

As in the Senate, House lawmakers appear divided along party lines. Democrats and their witnesses say that the Supreme Court’s recent decisions in Bell Atlantic v. Twombly and Ashcroft v. Iqbal have gutted the civil rights and antitrust laws and imposed an unfair and often insurmountable burden that will doom many valid claims. Republicans and their witnesses, meanwhile, say the court did the right thing to help reduce frivolous lawsuits that destroy small businesses and drag busy government officials into court unnecessarily.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), who testified at Wednesday’s hearing, has introduced legislation to effectively turn back the clock to before the Supreme Court’s rulings by restoring the previous standard for filing claims.That legislation, HR 4115, the Open Access to Courts Act, was the focus of the hearing.

The key question is, should a victim filing a lawsuit be required to produce evidence of specific credible facts supporting her claims in order to be allowed to proceed with the case? In the past, courts have required only “a short and plain statement” of the claims. The facts are adduced in the course of the lawsuit through a legal process known as “discovery.”

For those who view most lawsuits as frivolous, the Supreme Court’s new standard is a welcome change. Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) argued Wednesday that the high court’s recent requirement “seems to me to be very reasonable.” The proposed legislation, on the other hand, he argued, “is an economic stimulus package for trial lawyers.”

The Democrats’ witnesses, such as Eric Schnapper, law professor at University of Washington and a former attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, countered that the two recent Supreme Court cases “brought about sweeping changes in the lower courts, all for the worse.” In discrimination cases, now, so long as “discriminatory officials do a good job covering their tracks, under Iqbal and Twombly they can cut off any legal challenge before discovery is available to unearth their records or force them to answer questions under oath,” he said. The new standard “requires proof of a smoking gun,” which could doom many meritorious cases at the outset, he testified.

Gregory Katsas, a Justice Department official in the Bush administration who defended former Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller in the Iqbal case and now defends corporations at a private law firm, warned that the proposed legislation would “open the floodgates” for “fishing expeditions – intrusive and expensive discovery into implausible and insubstantial claims.” That would “impose massive costs on defendants who have engaged in no wrongdoing.”

When it comes to cases against government officials, such as Iqbal — which alleged that senior Bush administration officials discriminated against Muslims by improperly detaining them after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — “such discovery would vitiate an important component of the officials’ qualified immunity” even where the claims are against individual government officials “for actions undertaken to prosecute wars abroad or to respond to national?security emergencies at home,” said Katsas. “Such a result,” he added, “would be paralyzing if not deadly.”

Both sides came armed with statistics to support their case that the recent Supreme Court decisions were either a “sea change” in the law that decimated the ability of civil rights claimants to pursue their cases, or were merely a logical interpretation of existing law and had little impact on the actual outcome of cases in court.

As several of the expert witnesses pointed out, however, the statistics don’t really tell you all that much. Even if cases are being filed or dismissed at about the same rate as before, there’s no telling how many cases haven’t been filed because the new standard would doom them, or how many defense lawyers are relying on the new standards to ask courts to dismiss cases that they wouldn’t have dared tried to get dismissed so early in the game before.

Blackburn was joined by GOP Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (Wash.), Sue Myrick (N.C.), Candice Miller (Mich.), Michele Bachmann (Minn.) and Jean Schmidt (Ohio).

Funny, though, that none of the participants has signed on in support of legislation to ensure that all women aged 40 and up have access to routine mammograms. That bill, sponsored by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), would require insurance companies that cover diagnostic mammograms also to cover routine, annual breast cancer screenings for all women 40 and older.

Only one Republican, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Fla.), is among the 79 co-sponsors of Nadler’s bill.

The message from the Republicans seems to be: We’re wary of the government recommending fewer tests based on independent research, but it’s OK for private insurance companies, driven by profit motives, to deny access to the same services.

“Both the Bush and Obama administrations have previously relied upon the state secrets privilege to block litigation challenging policies ranging from warrantless wiretapping to extraordinary rendition, and our organizations welcome the new policy as an important first step in bringing much needed reform to the use of this doctrine,” the letter said.

However, the new policy does not address all the problems, the organizations wrote. “To ensure proper oversight and an independent check on executive discretion, judges must be able to review the evidence, order the creation of non-privileged substitutes where appropriate, and assess whether there is sufficient non-privileged evidence to enable a case to proceed,” the letter said. “Legislation is necessary to implement these key reforms.”

The seven organizations who signed onto the letter are the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington Legislative Office, the Brennan Center for Justice, the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Constitution Project, Human Rights First, the National Security Archive, and OMB Watch.

The legislation they’re supporting has been introduced in the Senate as the State Secrets Protection Act: S. 417, sponsored by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), and in the House as H.R. 984, sponsored by Representative Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.).

After the House Judiciary Committee worked for days shortly after September 11, 2001 to hammer out a bill that both parties’ representatives unanimously agreed to, Conyers recalled with obvious irritation, the House Rules committee managed to hack it up so much behind closed doors that by the time the full House voted on it the next day, it was unrecognizable.

“Then Chairman Dreier” — referring to Rep. David Dreier (R-Calif.), then chairman of the House Rules Committee — “under lord knows whose instructions, substituted that bill for another bill, that we at Judiciary had never seen. So we come here today now to consider what we do with those parts that are expiring.” Conyers proceeded to say that many of the problems being discussed at the hearing with the current law would have been addressed by the original bipartisan one, such as offering an opportunity for people harmed by the Patriot Act’s abuses to seek redress. The original law also “may have eliminated, or simplified, litigation about Patriot Act abuses that continue today,” said Conyers.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), who chaired today’s hearing of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties, backed up Conyers’ version of what happened.

“We held in this committee five days of markup and achieved unanimity on the Patriot Act. Then the bill just disappeared. And we had a new several-hundred-page bill revealed from the Rules Committee” that had to be voted on the next day, before most members of Congress even had a chance to read it, said Nadler.

None of the Republicans at today’s hearing challenged the Democratic chairmen’s version of events.

The bill, sponsored by Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) Jared Polis (D-Col.) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), already has the support of more than 50 additional lawmakers, The Advocate said.

Nadler told the Bay Area Reporter in July that the bill would amount to a full repeal of DOMA, including Section 2, which advises states to disregard same-sex marriages that have been legally performed in other states, and Section 3, which prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages.

As recently as June, President Obama has backed a full repeal of DOMA.

Though he wouldn’t discuss the risks posed by any particular individuals, responding to Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), who tried to get him to agree that terrorists could be kept safely in maximum security prisons, as they usually are, Mueller said that’s not necessarily true, because imprisoned gang leaders sometimes run their gangs from inside prisons.

“It depends on the circumstances,” Mueller said.

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the ranking Republican on the committee, repeated his mantra that terrorists should not be allowed anywhere in the United States. “No good purpose is served by allowing known terrorists, who trained at terrorist training camps, to come to the U.S. and live among us,” he said. “Guantanamo Bay was never meant to be an Ellis Island.”